Jacques-Marie-Emile Lacan was born on April 13, 1901, and was raised in a Catholic family. After his studies, in 1927, he began his clinical training in the women’s section of the Clinic for Mental and Encephalic Diseases at Sainte-Anne’s hospital. He becomes fully integrated in the fields of neurology and psychiatry. In 1932, he publishes his translation of Freud’s On Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality. The same year he was awarded a doctorate for his thesis: On Paranoiac Psychosis in its Relations to the Personality, and becomes a specialist in paranoia. In 1934, Lacan becomes a member of La Société Psychoanalytique de Paris (SPP), an organization where he lectured and, for a brief period, becomes president in 1953. That same year, he leaves SPP to join Société Française de Pschanalyse (SFP) and also begins seminars at Sainte-Anne’s Hospital where he remains until 1963.

Lacan’s seminars re-interpretations of Freud, and were short compared to the usual one-hour sessions. His audience grew as the seminars allowed flexibility for the analysts-in-training. Many of his seminars are published.

In 1960, his Ethics becomes the background of his work; it attributes desire as the root of ethics. In 1962 he is banned from the International Psychoanalytic Association for his unconventional views of psychoanalysis. He then founded L’Ecole Freudienne de Paris (EFP) in 1963, which practiced psychoanalysis by the Lacanian method. EFP was dissolved in 1980 by Lacan, and “La Cause freudienne” was founded. “It is up to you to be Lacanians if you wish; I am Freudian.” Lacan died on September 9, 1981, in Paris.

Theories

Lacan’s work has its largest influence in post-structuralism. From 1953, much of his work was driven by a “return to the meaning of Freud.” He integrated Freud’s theoretical writings with his own knowledge of structuralist linguistics, structural anthropology, topology, and game theory. His work extended the field of psychoanalysis into the fields of philosophy, human sciences, and linguistics.

During his clinical practice, Lacan published works on his “Mirror Stage,” a developed reconstitution of Freud’s Ego and Id. The “Mirror Stage” is his theory that as an infant, when it sees itself in the mirror, the infant’s understanding of “I” is not the same as what it sees. An infant comes to understand that what it sees is itself, and the child understand language with regards to the reflection of itself. The ego is formed from understanding that the reflection, what the infant sees, is the “I.”

Lacan uses structural linguistics to critique Freud’s role of the symbolic by claiming that the unconscious is not ruled by instinctual desires, rather it is “structured like a language.” Language is symbolic in that it is an expression of something that is not in front of you. Language is used in a way that separates subject from signifier.

Arlie Russell Hochschild was born on January 15, 1940 in Boston, Massachusetts with a fairly prestigious family history with her father – Francis Henry – being a diplomat. Her mother’s name was Ruth Russell. Her own family started in June of 1965 with her marriage to Adam Hochschild, who at the time was a magazine editor. She had two children, whom she named David and Gabriel Russell. She attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and received her Bachelor’s Degree, she then went on to graduate from University of California: Berkeley with her M.A. and Ph.D.

edit: 11/14/12
She received her B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1962, her M.A. in 1965 and Ph. D. in 1969; she received both of these degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

Arlie Hochschild grew up in a very gendered home, her father was the breadwinner and her mother was the caretaker. But Hochschild’s mother did more than just be a homemaker, she volunteered for the PTA, helped start a preschool program in Montgomery County, and support Francis Henry’s career as a diplomat. Hochschild drew on her experiences as a child and the family dynamic to enable her to do research and write about care giving and having the caring relationship with your children. She explains to us in the introduction of her book, The Commercialization of Intimate Life, that her mother was very good one and she devoted her life to caring for the family and was great at it, but never really seemed happy to be doing so.

Hochschild is a member of the American Sociological Association, the Sociologists for Women in Society, the American Gerontological Society, the American Federation of Teachers, Sociological Research Association, and lastly, the International Association for Research on Emotion.

She is currently both a writer and a teacher. She has taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz as the assistant professor of Sociology from 1969 to 1971 and at the University of California, Berkeley where she is currently the professor of sociology from 1983 to now, but before that she was the assistant professor from 1971 to 1975 and then associate professor from 1975 to 1983.

The three writers that Hochschild refers to as opening her eyes to sociology were Erving Goffman, David Riesman, and C. Wright Mills.

She is also a strong activist for a mother’s right to be able to balance equally her job that earns an income and her job of being a caring mother, as well as a homemaker. Along with her strong stance on the above issues, Dr. Hochschild has been the director of the Center for Working Families since 1998.

edit: 11/26/12Works / TheoriesThe Second Shift refers to the “double work” that women often take on in addition to their day jobs (which can be largely professional). The second shift includes housework, childcare, domestic responsibilities and more. Hochschild says that even though women are now working and often have the same jobs as men, their domestic role at home hasn’t change much, this is what she refers to as the stalled gender revolution.

Slavoj Zizek was born on March 21, 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia which was at the time a part of Communist Yugoslavia. Zikek had a middle class up bringing with both of his parents being professionals and atheists. In 1968, Zizek was in Czechoslovakia and witnessed the “Prague Spring,” a reform movement in which the Czechs fought against repression but were held back by the Soviet Union. That moment had a profound influence on Zizek and his later academic career. As an undergraduate student in Slovenia, Zizek engrossed himself in the philosophic works of Lacan and other French philosophers. After earning his Bachelors degree in Philosophy and Sociology, Zizek went on to pursue his Masters but faced a hurdle on the way. His thesis on his favorite French philosophers garnered him much attention by the faculty both by its profoundness but also by its controversial ideology. As a result he had to add an appendix to his thesis stating that he strayed away from the accepted Marxist ideas. Due to this controversy, Zizek had a difficult time finding a job and he ultimately joined the communist party as a result and was able to land a job in government speech writing. In 1971, Zizek was hired as an assistant researcher at the University of Ljubljana but lost his position in 1973 after being accused by the new reformist Slovenian regime that his Master’s thesis as being “non-Marxist.” He then worked for the Yugoslav Army in Karlovac, until he found a position as a clerk for the Slovenian Marxist Center where he became acquainted with Lacanian scholars Mladen Dolar and Rastko Močnik. In 1979, Zizek was hired as a researcher at the Institute of Sociology for the University of Ljubljana. In the 1980′s, he began to publish books that examined Hegelian and Marxist theories from the point of view of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. In the late 1980s, Zizek came under public attention for his work in Maldina, a magazine that was critical of the Titoist regime. Slavoj Zizek was involved with the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights a social movement fighting for democracy in Slovenia and when the first free elections were held in 1990, he unsuccessfully ran for president aligned with the Liberal Democratic Party.
With the 1989 publication of his first book written in English, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Slavoj Zizek became widely recognized as an important contemporary social theorist. Slavoj Zizek has since then published numerous books in English through the publishing house Verso.

Influences

G.W.F. Hegel, Jacques Lacan, and Karl Marx are the three main influences on Slavoj Zizek’s work. Zizek’s inspiration for his works and political thought is Karl Marx, while his methodology is greatly influenced by Hegelian dialectical thinking. However, in Zizek’s reading of Hegel, the dialectic is never fully resolved. Zizek employs Lacan’s framework and terminology, especially Lacan’s three registers of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real.

Key Ideas

Slavoj Zizek combines the German Idealism of Hegel and Lacanian psychoanalysis towards a critique of current political issues and ideology. Zizek is known for using popular culture, jokes, and colorful anecdotes to illustrate his concepts.

The Subject

Zizek employs the Cartesian Subject in a radical way. Whereas the traditional reading of Descartes’ cogito is that of a substantial, fully self-conscious, and autonomous “I”, Zizek follows Lacan’s view that subjectivity corresponds to a lack (manque). Zizek argues that hegemonic regimes interpellate individuals into roles and mandates. For Zizek, the cogito is the space that resists full inscription into ideological mandates, that is, the space that is not interpellated.

The big Other

The “big Other” is the communal system of institutions, laws, and customs that regulate our behavior. Zizek argues that the “big Other” is not material, but rather a purely symbolic order. This means that we engage in a degree of idealization, favoring to a certain degree the symbolic over the Real. Zizek puts this disavowal in terms of an “as if.” We act “as if” our neighbors do not smell bad or look ridiculous in order to coexist with them. The big Other is a kind of collective lie which we all individually participate in. When Zizek state that today the big Other no longer exists, he means that the postmodern subject is cynical towards official institutions, yet at the same time believe in conspiracies. The demise of the big Other is manifest in the coexistence of cynicism and belief.

Ideology

Zizek calls for a new way of thinking about ideology today, one that is located in what we do and not in what we know. He argues that we are not so much living in a post-ideological era as in an era dominated by the ideology of cynicism. Adapting from Reformulating Marx’s concept of ideology with Peter Sloterdijk’s, he sums up the cynical attitude as “they know that, in their activity, they are following an illusion, but still, they are doing it.”

Criticism

Zizek has been widely read by many scholars and has thus been recognized as one of the greatest intellectuals of our time. His work is still nonetheless not free from criticism. Critics of Zizek claim that his ideas are not new and that he takes them from Hegel and Marx without adding anything new. Others claim that he actually misinterprets his major influences, and that he is in fact anti-Marxist. Some of his opponents have called him a “political opportunist”. They claim that he preaches a radical ideology to the public but when it comes down to real politics he aligns himself with the side that actually hurts the working class and the true socialists. Zizek has said that he is a supporter of Communism, but his opponents think that his point of view is actually not in agreement with the struggles of the 20th century and that all he really preaches is social harmony. His presentation style is extremely unique and grabs the attention of a crowd, but some say that his antics are actually distracting. He appears to be obsessive compulsive, and speaks as though he is telling jokes at a comedy club. Zizek’s appearance and delivery make it difficult to take him seriously according to his critics. It has also been said that Zizek’s ideas are vague. In other words they have no substance or real arguments but are actually attitudes. He tries so hard to be provocative that he does not thoroughly think through his claims.

Since Slovoj Zizek was heavily influenced by Lacan, I think he might be a good option for the third theorist. Plus he’s pretty funny and entertaining. Check out the links to get a better sense of Zizek, if you don’t know him already.